Something I've used with a few of my students, and also my 6 year old son, is to learn to read apart from the instrument. Then gradually bring it to the instrument. If you try to go at it with your instrument in hand, the instrument becomes a bit of a distraction for what you are attempting to learn at the moment.

Many of my students report that learning to write/transcribe music has helped their reading a great deal. I found the same to be true when studying composition at the university - by writing, you are really kind of reading in reverse, only your sense of "rhythmic awareness" gets multiplied by a factor of about 100. Technically, I could read before that, but after that, I could read a lot of things on sight, which is a different thing.

Reading music definately helps. Even though I'm a mere student I always rave about lessons. They may not give you everything you want at first. But they do help tremendously. My first book for reading music was like Mel Bay's Bass Method Volume 1. It was basic, which was good for me to get me used to reading it. And it gives you diagrams of the neck and stuff. Writing it is helpful to b/c it puts what you've learned to practice.

I learned to read without my bass.
I have a book with only notes, no rythm. I would take the metronome and say all the note name at a steady speed. Incrasing the speed every once in a while. And I have a book with only rythm, so I would tap the rythm with the metronome. I would do that on my lunch brake at work.
After a while I started to read the note on my bass and play only rythm with the other book on my bass.

And after that I started to read real charts.
I don,t know if it was the best way, but it worked good with me.

Originally posted by yottskry Thanks, some useful suggestions there guys. I like the metronome idea particularly...

Also, does anyone know where to get bass sheet music? I've tried looking, but it's all treble or written for piano so I'm only playing half the piece

cheers,

Steve

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You can't go wrong with the Bach 2 part inventions. Technically they are intermediate/advanced, but they are so contrapuntal that each part truly is a melody unto itself. Also, if you have access to a multitrack machine, you can learn one part, record it, and then learn the second part and play along. They'll take a long time to learn if you're a beginning reader, but they are rhythmically fairly simple and technically very difficult on the bass - so you'll be giving your technique a real shot in the arm every time you work on them

Also, it wouldn't hurt you one bit to begin to learn treble clef once you get halfway decent at bass clef...it opens up a whole new world, and the principle behind it is exactly the same as bass clef, only with a different referential "starting point".

My teacher used a book that taught notation, I think it was called the "Electric Bass" series, but I could be wrong. In jazz band I had problems reading and playing at the same speed, so I went over it and tabbed each note (in hindsight that was probably counter-productive) so I could play the song the same speed as everyone else. Luckily I was still learning with my teacher, and after awhile I threw away the tab and was able to read and play the right speed at the same time. Now that I'm out of school for the summer, I kind of got lazy with reading music and now I've been practicing a lot lately for when jazz band starts again.